Florida Bill Would Punish Criminals Who Use Cryptocurrency

State lawmakers in Florida have introduced two bills which would add virtual currencies to the state’s money laundering statute. The bills were introduced in the wake of a Miami court case from last year, where a judge ruled that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are not money, and thus did not fall under the state’s money laundering law. The Senate version of the bill, Senate Bill 1626, was first introduced in the Florida Senate on March 3rd by Republican state Senator Rob Bradley. The companion bill in the Florida Houses of Representatives, House Bill 1379, was introduced on March 7th by Republican state Representative Jose Felix Diaz. State Rep. Diaz represents District 116, which includes Miami-Dade County.

On April 18th House Bill 1379 passed the state House’s Appropriations Committee unanimously, and on Monday the 24th the bill unanimously passed the the state House’s Judiciary Committee. The House version of the bill was added to the Special Order calendar for Wednesday the 27th, where the bill could be voted on by the full state House of Representatives. Senate Bill 1626 unanimously passed the state Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee on March 27th, and then unanimously passed the Appropriations Subcommittee on Criminal and Civil Justice on April 13th. The Senate’s version of the bill is now being considered by the state Senate’s Appropriations Committee.

The two bills were drafted with the help of Katherine Fernandez Rundle, a cybercrimes prosecutor from Miami-Dade County.“The high-tech criminals of the 21st Century use virtual currencies like bitcoin to accumulate and hide the profits of their illegal activities. This legislation makes sure that traffickers and fraudsters can no longer try to use internet-based currencies to hide and move their ill-gotten gains,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement.

The proposed legislation would define virtual currency as “a medium of exchange in electronic or digital format that is not a coin or currency of the United States or any other country.” The language used in both bills is practically identical. For now, cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are not among the types of financial instruments and transactions which are applicable to the money laundering statute. The current law in Florida prohibits people from gaining money from a criminal activity, as well as prohibits using money to further a criminal activity. Due to the court ruling from last year, cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are not legally recognized as money, and therefore cannot be treated as such under the state’s current money laundering law. If the proposed legislation is enacted, prosecutors will still need to prove that a person intended to help launder money, or intended to help further criminal activity.

In the case which inspired the two bills a Florida man, Michell Espinoza, fell victim to undercover law enforcement agents who tried to set him up in a sting operation by buying, what at the time was, $1,500 US Dollars worth of bitcoin. The undercover agents told Espinoza that they had planned to purchase stolen credit card numbers with the bitcoin he was selling them. Michell Espinoza won his case and was cleared of all charges in July of 2016. The state unsuccessfully tried to appeal the judge’s ruling in that case, but were unsuccessful.

While legislators may intend for the two new bills to make people like Michell Espinoza into criminals, it is important to remember something that Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Teresa Mary Pooler wrote in her eight page opinion in the case of the State of Florida v. Michell Abner Espinoza, where Judge Pooler wrote, “This court is unwilling to punish a man for selling his property to another, when his actions fall under a statute that is so vaguely written that even legal professionals have difficulty finding a singular meaning.” Even if the new bills are enacted, it is possible that future defendants being prosecuted under Florida’s money laundering statute could successfully argue that the law is unconstitutional in that it violates the vagueness doctrine.

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

David

Cryptocurrency Creates New Opportunities

cryptocurrency creates new opportunities

Cryptocurrency Creates New Opportunities

Over the last few years, the Cryptocurrency industry has been gaining popularity, and for a good reason. With the complexity that goes into making physical dollars, it’s clear now why people are opting to print a new form of currency. Making a digital currency is quite easier for someone with basic coding skills. Most are turning to the internet to gain ground and understand its use and value. Before, the concept was unfamiliar and scary just like the credit card some years back.

You might have come across the terms Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ether. These are cryptocurrencies that use the Blockchain Technology to ensure this currency and technology is safe. Here we look at the some of the new opportunities created by cryptocurrency versatility in different fields. But before that, let’s look at the basics.

WHAT IS CRYPTOCURRENCY?

A cryptocurrency is an encrypted digital currency that is created using advanced encryption techniques commonly known as cryptography. The concept became a reality upon the creation of Bitcoin in 2009. It captured the attention of significant investors in April 2013 when it recorded a price of $266 per bitcoin. So, will the currency eventually unseat the ruling currencies such as dollars and euros? The answer lies with the Bitcoin. That said, what are the new opportunities being created by the cryptocurrency? Find out.

IMPROVEMENT IN EDUCATION

According to Gigaom reports, university students can now receive bitcoin once they enroll in school, and some universities are even accepting the currency as a form of payment for tuition. Dan Elitzer, the President of the MIT Bitcoin Club, and Jeremy Rubin, a computer scientist at MIT, successfully raised about half a million dollars for the enrollment of more than four thousand students worldwide in tech institutions.

The team together with the bitcoin community managed to provide students a chance to develop their own bitcoin wallets. This seems like a clever plan judging from the recent advancements in Bitcoin where they have developed the new Xapo Wallet.

Today technology has enabled students to access different services including essay services and now cryptocurrency. Providing college students with access to bitcoin is a great step in cryptocurrency especially since universities are now accepting alternative currencies such as Bitcoin as payment for tuition.

ENTREPRENEURIAL INNOVATION

The improved growth in the use of cryptocurrency leads to entrepreneurial innovation and it is said to foster growth in traditional banking infrastructure. Once the infrastructure is built and there is mass distribution of the currency, new businesses can build financial services without having to invest in expensive infrastructure. They just have to build applications and supportive services aside from the cryptocurrency system and they conduct their business without building a data center, huge hardware, and an IT department.

The ability of an entrepreneur to access a source of payment method has fueled innovations in the financial services. These services are beneficial to the constituencies and areas that are underserved by the traditional banking providers.

FACILITATES ESTABLISHMENT OF CUSTOM DESIGNED CURRENCIES

Cryptocurrencies are the latest technological advancements that have enabled groups to create custom designed currencies. Today we see banks and other institutions working hard to establish their digital currencies and this is a new chance to experiment new technology.

Bitcoin has already set ground and proven to be quite dynamic and resilient amongst other currencies. It has undergone massive criticism but it has proven it’s powerful on the global perspective. Being an example of a successful digital currency, it is completely public and can be used in peer-to-peer transactions. It is a global financial utility that is accessible to anyone provided you’re connected to the internet.

Those who say that Bitcoin and Ethereum may become irrelevant may be surprised. Cryptocurrencies are high-grade financial tools that are made for legitimate and exciting function with a sense of global financial services that bypasses the infrastructure of traditional banking. Some experts even suggest that blockchain payment systems may beat the mighty U.S. Automated House financial transactions system come 2020.

With the technological advancement that is being experienced now, it is not a surprise to find that the cryptocurrency usage may accelerate to greater heights. The blockchain technology is expected to form a great part of the coming internet generation with massive transformation in commerce and overall structure of corporations and many other institutions across the globe. Be ready for this radical transformation. It’s worth checking out.

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

Author Laura Buckler

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As Bitcoin Price Surges, Phishing Attacks on Cryptocurrency Wallets Intensify

As Bitcoin Price Surges,
Phishing Attacks on Cryptocurrency Wallets Intensify

Today's Bitcoin to US Dollar exchange rate has reached $902, the first time Bitcoin price has gone above the $900 mark since January 2014, almost three years ago. Nobody knows what's driving this sudden surge of Bitcoin popularity, but cyber-criminals won't bother looking into macroeconomic factors when deciding that the market is ripe and ready for the taking again.

Bitcoin price surge reverberates through cybercriminal landscape

Over the past couple of months, as the Bitcoin price was slowly coming out of the $200-$400 price range where it spent almost two years, cyber-criminals took notice.

The first to do so were ransomware authors, who had to cut down the ransom demands they asked from victims. They had to do this because a ransom of 2 Bitcoin that once meant $400, all of sudden became $1,200, or more, a sum that very few users could afford to pay.

But ransomware victims are occasional Bitcoin users. A more lucrative operation is the phishing market sector, where crooks have yet again turned their full attention to Bitcoin wallet services.

The culprits behind these phishing pages targeting Bitcoin users are your regular career phishers. The Cisco OpenDNS team has tracked the operators of some of these Bitcoin phishing sites to numerous other phishing domains, used for collecting credentials for other services, such as Google, Dropbox, Apple, Amazon, and others.

What Any Cryptocurrency Needs to Achieve Mass Adoption

5 Things Any Cryptocurrency Needs to Achieve Mass Adoption

Bitcoin, the giant in the world of cryptocurrency, continues to defy all expectations of an early demise and rises higher and higher in value and use. Its adoption as everyday money, however, remains negligent among the common people, almost eight years after the digital currency first emerged.

While the title of “ the first cryptocurrency” is no longer up for grabs, the title of “digital cash” still remains unclaimed, ready to be seized by another up-and-coming digital money. In order to become the common medium of exchange for large swaths of the world, a cryptocurrency first needs to fulfill a few crucial requirements.

Easy and inexpensive transactions

Forget about cryptocurrency for a second. Right now, regular people use either cash or card for day-to-day transactions.

Cash has no transaction costs but requires you to be physically present and have adequate change, and card transactions are relatively instant, though final confirmations often happen the next day, although fees are relatively high it is enough to disincentivize very small transactions. Any cryptocurrency wanting to make inroads with the common people has to beat this by having faster and cheaper transactions.

Bitcoin already offers this advantage, though the margin by which it does is growing slimmer by the day, and even now it may not be enough to entice the public to abandon traditional financial means. Any cash or card replacement has to be better by a large enough margin to warrant a change.

The same goes for fees. Cash has no fees. Other money transfer tools, like cards and bank accounts, are able to charge a fee because they are able to function across great distances with greater efficiency. Cryptocurrency has those same advantages over cash, and as such can be expected to have an associated transaction fee. However, that fee must be significantly lower in order to entice your average consumer away from banking systems. Large companies can afford to make major payment changes in order to save a few cents per transaction because of scale, but regular people cannot.

Improvements to Bitcoin’s basic model

Bitcoin retains an enormous lead in adoption ahead of other cryptocurrencies. Compared to traditional financial systems, Bitcoin provides enough benefits and improvements to warrant a switch. If a currency wants to beat Bitcoin as the new money, it has to be objectively better. Faster or more inexpensive transactions, more anonymity, a better governance structure, and other features are needed to set another coin apart to justify its use and adoption. If a cryptocurrency does similar things as Bitcoin in the exact same way, its chances of taking over as the digital money of the future will be extremely slim.

A streamlined Bitcoin substitution mechanism

Right now, Bitcoin maintains a massive lead in adoption over every other cryptocurrency. That lead was earned on the promise and hype, not of Bitcoin alone, but of cryptocurrency and of the Blockchain technology itself.

Attempting to best the great front-runner of digital currency from scratch, and without a truly staggering level of difference between the two, simply won’t happen. The only way to compete with Bitcoin, as previously mentioned, is to provide at least as much utility, and a large chunk of Bitcoin’s utility is its adoption lead. What another cryptocurrency needs, then, is an easy and efficient way to be used in Bitcoin’s place such as an automatic exchange built into the wallet.

An easy fiat currency conversion system

Like it or not, the world still currently runs on government-issued fiat currency. Living entirely off of cryptocurrency, without any method of conversion into fiat, it is extremely difficult at the present time, and not a viable option for most people. The average person will need an easy way to buy and offload a cryptocurrency for it to be a practical option for them. Most cryptocurrencies are only easily accessible through first acquiring Bitcoin. In order to become dominant and widely accessible, that crippling reliance on Bitcoin needs to end.

An aggressive adoption campaign targeted at the common people

Finally, in order to entice the world at large, the digital currency needs to presented in a way that resonates with most people. While some technical users will care about hash rates, cryptographic keys, smart contracts, and ring signatures, the common folk will not. They need to be reached with the language of cheaper fees, faster access to funds, more security, less paperwork, etc. The only way anyone will know why cryptocurrency makes sense for them is for someone to tell them why. In order to achieve that, a successful marketing campaign is needed.

The cryptocurrency world, while new, is wildly diverse. However, in terms of a tool for everyday use in financial transactions, Bitcoin has almost exclusive reign. In order to dethrone the king of digital cash, any competitor has to bring their A-game.

David Ogden
Contributor

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